The great debate

It took the Roman Catholic Church 350 years to admit that Galileo was right about planets revolving around the sun.

Cold comfort for a man who was accused of heresy, tried by the Inquisition, forced to recant and lived the remainder of his days under house arrest. What was their evidence? Biblical references that said "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved, the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved and the sun rises and sets and returns to its place".

History is replete with examples of scientific discoveries that challenge popular beliefs, and consequently entrenched societal norms, being met with such conservative stonewalling. Over 100 years ago the Nobel prize winning Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius faced similar criticism for his discoveries on the effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on global climate.

It has taken almost a century for his work to filter through to popular consciousness. Will we have to wait another 250 years before the obvious is accepted as obvious?

'...both adults and children resist acquiring scientific information that clashes with common-sense intuitions about the physical and psychological domains. Additionally, when learning information from other people, both adults and children are sensitive to the trustworthiness of the source of that information. Resistance to science, then, is particularly exaggerated in societies where nonscientific ideologies have the advantages of being both grounded in common sense and transmitted by trustworthy sources...'

They go on to say:

'...The community of scientists has a legitimate claim to trustworthiness that other social institutions, such as religions and political movements, lack. The structure of scientific inquiry involves procedures, such as experiments and open debate, that are strikingly successful as revealing truths about the world. All other things being equal, a rational person is wise to defer to a geologist about the age of the earth rather than a priest or to a politician...'

The point is that what should be a simple search for the truth, aimed at gaining knowledge to address what may well be an unprecedented disaster, is being derailed by an ongoing "debate" which in reality is a fatuous, never-ending, point scoring slanging match.

The "debate" has actually been set up a bit like a game: in the true spirit of popular sporting entertainment, the competing positions have been polarised by the media into two sides, with any intermediate positions being ignored, and then both sides have been radicalised as extremes (alarmists vs sceptics). The stage having been set, virtually their every utterance is sensationalised or misrepresented as the ball is hit back and forth. When either side "scores" there's a blaze of "news", and then it lapses back to the perpetual slog.

It may be an entertaining game, but when it peters out the assembled audience - which is all of us - will be left to shuffle home no better informed and no further ahead in terms of addressing the problems we face.

But if there must be a debate why don't we try to have a proper one right now, right here in Australia, on national television, and get it over and done with? Why doesn't Tony Jones moderate a Q&A discussion between the heretics, on the one hand, and the modern day orthodox theologians on the other?

The 'warmist fraudsters' are easy: they could be represented by the likes of Professors Matthew England, Penny Sackett and Ian Lowe.

For the "scientific sceptics" we could line up a multi-disciplinary team. From politics, Opposition leader Tony Abbott or Senator Nick Minchin spring to mind, and from the academy, Professor Ian Plimer. And to cap it off, who better than that self-proclaimed iconoclastic polyhistor, Andrew Bolt, someone who will "fearlessly cut through the myths and the spin to tell you the bottom-line facts behind everything from global warming to terrorism... No sacred cow of the New Age is safe from his scalpel...." (courtesy of ICMI).

So we can all sit back as Bolt slaughters the livestock (watch that scalpel Jonesy!) while the others grapple with hard hitting questions like: How can the mean temperature of the ground be in any way influenced by the presence of the heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere? Isn't current global warming just part of a natural cycle? And (ooh, a really curly one) doesn't water vapour account for almost all of the greenhouse effect? To enhance the debate's integrity (or perhaps to shorten it, or maybe even to add spice) all panellists should be asked for their primary sources each and every time they assert a scientific fact or quote anyone else!

You have no doubt been hearing a lot about the Paris Agreement and know that it pertains to climate change, but are too embarrassed at this stage to ask for an overall explanation of what it's all about.